Author Archives: Dennis

Devdas

Dennis May 21, 2007 No Comments

Devdas [2002]

Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Actor: Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai

This is the first Bollywood film that I’ve seen that I wasn’t bored with after the first ten minutes. It’s relatively easy-access for westerners, despite the massive amounts of unrealistic over-acting that happens, which is staple-diet for Indian movie-goers, and the relatively ridiculous story which offended a lot of my western sensibilities. What was interesting, however, (and I might spoil the sliver-thin story for you,) is that this story does not have a happy ending.

The story is of Paro (Rai) and Devdas (Khan), and their childhood affection turning into a sincere love for one another as Devdas returns from being in London for study for over ten years. Devdas is from a wealthy family with a high status, and while Paro is from a family with relatively a lot of wealth, their status seems to be beneath the family of Devdas, regardless of the close relationship of these two families for decades. However, Paro’s mother seems oblivious to the possibility of Devdas’ parents denying the marriage because of Paro and Devdas’ obvious love for one another. She is horribly emberassed when she is publicly scorned for the idea of Paro and Devdas to be married, and she vows to find a family for Paro who is even wealthier and of higher status than Devdas’ family.

She succeeds and Paro is married to an older man who’s first wife had died. He wants a wife in order to complete the household, and to be mother to his children (while Paro is almost as old as his children), but not for love or affection. Paro is still madly in love with Devdas, who, after Paro’s marriage, is slowly drowning himself and his misery in a bottle of expensive wine, and so finds peace in her new role and new family.

Devdas’ self-destructive misery forces him into neighbourhoods of ill repute and into the presence of courtesans, of which Chandramukhi (Dixit) is one. She’s a girl of low birth, but has made a fortune with her work. She’s a dancer and entertainer, and while she’s not a prostitute, most people of higher status treat her that way. Initially, Devdas wants nothing to do with her, but her love and devotion to him grows, and she tries to get him to stop his destructive ways. She can’t help but love him, even though his heart belongs to Paro.

Massive amounts of unncessary drama, dancing and singing, with a lot of beautiful people. It’s a fun flick, even though the running time is something like eleven-million hours, and it’s worth checking out if you’re interesting in trying out this genre of film.

20070521

Dennis May 21, 2007 1 Comment

.: Headache
This weekend was kind of sucky, as I was afflicted by a massive, multi-day spanning headache that I couldn’t shake until late last night.

.: World Press Photo ’07
On saturday afternoon, despite my headache, I made it to the World Press Photo exhibition at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. I love going there each year, but I completely missed it in 2006, so I was determined to go in 2007. The photos were powerful and awe inspiring as they always are, and the topics were more diverse than they had been over the last few years. There was only one section dedicated to the war in Iraq, which surprised me, but there were sections on sport, war in Lebanon, climate change effects in Africa, poverty (in Chicago), hunger in Africa, and breakdancing. Powerful, invoking positive as well as negative emotions. Beautiful.

.: Dennis’ Birthday Present
However, besides that it was cool, because I finally got to give Dennis his birthday present, which was the culmination of weeks of organising, hindered by finding a good company to do what we wanted to do, get the funds together by convincing Dennis’ friends that they should participate, scheduling things, and scheduling problems due to illness. Yesterday, Dennis, Richard and I drove to Lelystad Airport and even up until the point where we walked in the aeroplane hangar he wasn’t entirely sure what his birthday present was. When I told him, he was very pleasantly surprised, and very happy with his gift. We sat out in the sun while we waited for his instructor and talked about all kinds of things as we watched planes fly by. The weather was nice so we were all in relatively good spirits (damned headache!) Then the instructor came, who was a nice elderly man with a lot of pazzaz who calmly explained to us which figures Dennis would do while in the air. It was so obvious he loved aerobatics, and his enthusiasm rubbed off on us. By the time he was done telling us which figures and how many G-forces Dennis would have to endure, I was even more jealous than before.

Richard and I got to watch the aeroplane do its acrobatics while sitting in the sun. It looked like a little hornet going every which way with amazing speed and agility. It looked very surreal, you don’t realise that someone’s up there, controlling the aeroplane (or at least, trying to) and working his arse off. That much became clear to us when the plane landed and came taxi’ing up to the hangar. We could see Dennis, with a big grin on his face, was bathed in sweat. Taking four or five G’s apparently takes a lot out of you. Cool!

.: Charity and investment
There’s an elderly man, obviously of diminished mental faculties and blind, who stands at the Grote Kerk in Amsterdam every saturday with a bag around his neck in which he has a tape-deck and he plays music. He holds out a copper cup, rattling with coins to the beat of the music. I always give him something when I pass him, because I cannot bear to walk past him and not give him anything. I was happy to see that he traded his bag/tapedeck combo for an electrical organ. He made a depth-investement that will certainly pay off, I think, since the music is clearer and he looks less like a beggar and more like a street musician. I was very happy to see that. :)

World of Starcraft?

Dennis May 18, 2007 3 Comments

There’s been a lot of talk and rumours recently about the new game that Blizzard is going to be announcing soon. The two top rumours are Starcraft 2, or even a World of Starcraft, considering the amount of MMO developers Blizzard has been recruiting over the last few weeks. I would love either game, to be honest, but a Starcraft MMO would rock eggs on toast, and might even get me to abandon WoW and the upcoming Hellgate: London. :)

Closer

Dennis May 17, 2007 No Comments

Closer [2004]

Director: Mike Nichols
Actor: Clive Owen, Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman

I’m not too sure how I feel about this movie. At the end of the film I was left with two impressions; a) that it was a good movie, and b) that I hated all the characters in it. There’s just something about their actions that leave me disliking each and every one of them. It’s not like they’re flawed like any human being, because some of them make some bone-headed, ultimately self-destructive choices that no sane person would make. That said the acting is solid, and especially Clive Owen rocks this movie.

It’s about four people, two couples, who meet eachother independently of one another, seemingly by coincidence, and all fall in love with eachother. Not in a good, let’s-join-a-hippie-free-love-for-all-commune kind of way, but more in the adultery kind of way. Law falls in love with Roberts, while in a relationship with Portman. Roberts gets in a relationship with Owen and promptly starts a relationship behind is back with Law. Owen turns evil. Portman turns saintly (almost), and everyone ends up unhappy and awkward with one another. It’s a crazy four-way relationship that benefits nobody.

Good movie, but kind of depressing.

Film Reviews

Dennis May 16, 2007 No Comments

When Jim showed me the light and I finally closed my boards, there was one thing that kind of bugged me; different people had written a shitload of movie reviews in one of the threads called “Movie Suggestions.” I always liked reading other people’s reviews, and I definitely want to hear more about other people’s opinions on films. (I used to not care so much, now, with the amount of shit being published, more and more I find reviews to be a handy way to filter the cream from the crap.)

So, I made a little movie review section on my website. It’s a little crude, as it is, but I hope people will take a look at it and give me some useful suggestions. You can find it here.

One of the things I need to do is change the star-graphics on the ratings-system, since I stole the graphics from another website, and I’m sure they’re going to be none too happy about it. I also need to make it possible to add comments to the reviews, in the same way you can do that with my journal entries. That requires me to make a generic table for all kinds of posts, like I already did in the Shadowrun section of my website. Another thing I need to do is modify the scripts I made to auto-generate the webforms, to accept a label, other than the database name, which is particularly ugly in the section where you can submit a new movie to the collection of movies you can add reviews to. All that in due time. I’m happy with it as it is, since it kind of pushed me to make the webform scripts more sophisticated and versatile.